Q&A: The development of Luigi’s Mansion, from Kyoto to Canada

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, which Nintendo will publish
for 3DS on 24 March, took an unexpected journey. Three years ago,
Next Level Games, a Vancouver development studio that started out
creating sports games for Nintendo like the soccer
game Super Mario Strikers, suddenly found themselves
tasked with creating a sequel to the cult hit adventure game.

Next
Level took things in its stride, creating a game that sees
Mario's less-famous brother exploring not just a haunted mansion
but a whole variety of poltergeist-infested locations. Wired.com
spoke to developers from Next Level at Nintendo's office in Redwood
City, California, with the project's supervisor Yoshihito Ikebata
joining in via video chat from Kyoto. We discussed the project's
origins, why some design changes were made from the original
GameCube title and how the Nintendo 3DS's stereoscopic display
affects the game's design and the gameplay.

Wired.com:Alright, well, let's
just start this off as if it were an Iwata Asks, and I'll
just have the three of you guys introduce
yourselves.
Yoshihito Ikebata [YI]: This is Ikebata from SPD. I was the producer on the title.

Maybe you could tell us about some other projects you've
worked on for Nintendo, as background. YI: I participated in the Mario
vs. Donkey Kong series.

So you've got some experience crossing over, having
titles that were developed in the US but supervised in
Japan.YI: Yes, that's
correct.

And now the gentlemen from Next Level Games, could you
introduce yourselves?
Brian Davis [BD]: I am Brian Davis, I'm a gameplay programmer
at Next Level Games. I was responsible for developing a lot of the
gameplay for bosses and ghosts and Toad and a lot of other
things.
Bryce Holliday [BH]: I'm Bryce Holliday, a director at Next
Level Games. I've been working with Nintendo on all of the Nintendo
projects that Next Level Games has done since the beginning, Super
Mario Strikers, and Mario Strikers Charged,
and Punch-Out!!. We
just started working with Ikebata-san's group on this project. We
used to work for [Kensuke Tanabe's] group on these
projects.

So whoever wants to start by talking about what the
origin of this project was, why try to do another Luigi's
Mansion? I don't know who's best for that
question.
BH: I'll let Ikebata-san start on that one.
YI: I feel like there's always been a lot of feeling inside
Nintendo that we really wanted to create a sequel
to Luigi's Mansion. But it wasn't until the release
of the Nintendo 3D that we thought about how well the 3D effect
would work with a Luigi's Mansion title. And that's
when we started the real work of creating this game.

Why was there always a feeling at Nintendo that you
wanted to do another Luigi's Mansion game? And
why was the 3D effect, why did that make you think Luigi's
Mansion?
YI: In answer to your first question, I think it was just the very
basic feeling of using the Poltergust [vacuum] to solve riddles,
and sucking up ghosts with your vacuum cleaner. It felt so good,
that basic gameplay, the satisfying nature of that action in the
game really stuck with us and made us think about a sequel. As for,
what was it about 3D technology that we wanted to get across in
this game, I guess I should start by saying that we did some
experiments with 3D displays back during the GameCube era. And that
was something that we were calling at the time "dollhouse mode."
And that was to give a depth of field so you could really see the
depth in the room through the walls. And we felt that was a cool
way to let the player sense the environment. And so when we thought
back to those experiments, the Nintendo 3DS seemed like a very good
fit.

In fact, I think people with Nintendo have said that
when you first started doing the experiments with glasses-free 3D
attached to a GameCube, it was Luigi's
Mansion that you used as a test bed, right? YI: Yes, I think it was Luigi's
Mansion that they did those first experiments on in the
GameCube era. However, I wasn't the one working on it so it's a
little bit hard to say for sure.

So once you had made the decision to move forward with a
new Luigi's Mansion on 3DS, how did you pick
Next Level Games as the developer?
YI: As I recall, when we were looking to work on Luigi's
Mansion: Dark Moon, Next Level Games had just finished up
working on a previous project, and we were just finishing some very
early experiments with the concept. And because Next Level Games
had worked on the Mario Strikers series, we felt that
we were very happy with the work that they had done and also that
they were probably familiar, at that point, with the Mario family
characters. So I thought they were a very good choice.

A more aggressive Mario

So then turning our focus to Next Level Games, Bryce,
how did Next Level originally get started with Nintendo at the time
of Mario Strikers? BH: That one came about with a demo that we did to show
how quality of a developer we were. So we did a Mario soccer demo,
with no direction from Nintendo, just, hey, let's see what you guys
can do with Mario characters on the soccer pitch. And we had a
pink, over-saturated, jumping on the ball, rolling kind of soccer
game that was created in 6 months as a proof of concept.

And you had gone in and spoken to Nintendo about
possibly working with them. Did they give you that direction of
"Why don't you make a soccer game?"
BH: Yep, exactly.

Identifying that was a hole in their lineup; they
had Mario Tennis and Mario
Kart but not Mario Soccer.
BH: And our pedigree was doing sports games. We did NHL Hitz.
And a lot of us, if you go further back into the Vancouver
industry, there's a lot of sports games. FIFA's made in town.
Things like that. So we actually had experience with not only the
sport, but some of the character animations, key frame animations,
which is really important.

And at that time, the sports market was getting
narrower, right? Electronic Arts was grabbing a lot of exclusive
licenses and things of that nature, and it was going from a whole
ton of different sports games to maybe you'd buy one game of each
sport.
BH: Yep, and it was definitely trying to find our own niche there.
That's what Nintendo was coming to us for, what would be a Western
take on soccer? A Western take on Mario characters, first of all,
and then embed them in the soccer game because that was a hole in
their sports lineup.

So you did a very cartoony game, what you perceived to
be a Mario take on soccer, and Nintendo came back and said they
wanted something more realistic or more dramatic?
BH: We tried to emulate Nintendo at the time, Toadstool
Tour and games like that. And Tanabe-san, our director at
the time with SPD Group #3, and we did a complete demo and
basically earned the right to contract to prototype a real game.
And we said, okay, let's just keep building on the existing demo,
and they said, nope, throw it out, this is what we want you to
do.

What was the direction then?
BH: They wanted the aggressive -- that's not the right word, but
they wanted to see their characters be competitive.
In Mario Kart, everyone's happy and they're
high-fiving when they win. They wanted to see a competitive take on
a sports game. And they thought our background, being in Vancouver
compared to Japan, we would challenge them to be different. So
that's why the pads went on them, and checking went into the game
-- it kind of became a hockey/soccer hybrid game by Strikers
Charged.

So having reinvented soccer for Nintendo, or brought
back soccer into their catalog, you moved on
to Punch-Out!!. Now that was not intended to be
Nintendo coming in and saying, try a new Western thing. There, the
edict was, take this classic game people love and make something
that feels very much like that game. So that had to be a unique
challenge for you guys.
BH: To go into the Nintendo process of prototyping, they've got a
really strong commitment to trying things and experimentation, and
they've instilled those values on to us in the 10 years. A lot of
times, we build demos or prototypes and then can't see where it
would go, and then move on to something else. Down to the feature
level when you're actually building a game or even at the pitch
concept, tech demo level. At the end of Strikers,
we'd had enough of the relationship learning how they make games
and earning their respect that we actually were able to say, let's
do Punch-Out!!.

Okay, so this was you guys. BH: We were saying, hey, the project's coming to an end
-- we worked with Nintendo of America because that game is
extremely popular in North America and other territories -- and
then the relationship has us saying, hey, we'd like to do this, or
them coming to us and saying we've got this project.

Chris Kohler/Wired.com

At first, there are no limitations

It did always strike me
that Punch-Out!! did not always have the success
in Japan -- when you ask a Japanese Famicom fan to name their top
10 games, Punch-Out!! is not going to be up there but for
the NES, it is on everybody's top 5 list of games they love. So
that had to come from a Western developer, that passion. So having
brought it up and having gotten the green light to move ahead with
it, now you've trapped yourselves, because you've got to make a
great Punch-Out!! game. What was the process
like for that? BH: So this goes into the Nintendo process: At
first, there are no limitations. With Luigi's
Mansion, we had Luigi, we had a haunted house and a
Poltergust. For the sequel we were able to concept a bunch of
different ideas, like a Gauntlet
clone, even a detective game. So when we look back
at Punch-Out!!, at first it was, let's do gesture
recognition. Let's try to get a real boxing game going. And then
Tanabe-san saw a bunch of different experiments we'd done with the
hardware, trying to take advantage of the hardware in a unique way,
and eventually he changed the direction to say let's
imitate Punch-Out!! exactly. And then we did a Glass Joe
fight, updated graphics on Wii controls, and did it down to where
you get the stars in the frames. And then from those two demos, the
experimentation on gesture controls and imitating the original
project, they were kind of sold at that point, okay we can do it.
Then it was a question of how many characters we would get, and
give us the time to really fine-tune the character animation and
the polish you need for a twitch-based game. We had a lot of time
and a lot of polish to make that a fan's game. That was kind of the
direction: Let's do this one for the fans.

So this is interesting, and Brian maybe you can jump in
here, but this prototyping of different games. I'd like to hear
what this detective game was like.
BD: Basically, when we started this project, we had the
original vision of Luigi, the Poltergust and the ghosts. And we
didn't know at the time which hardware we would be on because
there's quite a bit of secrets and knowledge-sharing that goes on
within Nintendo that we're on a need-to-know basis. And so at the
beginning we explored with where we can take this idea.

So they came to you and said, we want you to
make Luigi's Mansion 2, but they weren't able to tell
you what hardware platform it would be on?
BD: Yeah. And I was actually prepared to do a review of
another demo, something completely different, and in the meeting
they were like, guess what - you're making Luigi's Mansion
2! So there was kind of a schism there for a bit. So then
we just played around with a bunch of paper designs, no
limitations, while we built some technology up. And then we just
wanted to see how we could grow the game. [Shigeru
Miyamoto's] and Ikebata-san's direction is
usually, you want to be the best game of that type of game, you
want to be a game where you're the only game like that. A lot of
the Nintendo genres, it's hard to define
what Metroid is. And it's really hard to define
what Luigi's Mansion was. But Luigi's
Mansion 2 is like Luigi's Mansion. And
that's what we were going for. We wanted to make a game that you
couldn't copy.

So, why Luigi? Why is it Luigi's Mansion
and not Mario's Mansion or Peach's Mansion? Why is
this the particular game series to which he has been
assigned?
YI: Because I wasn't involved in the development
of Luigi's Mansion 1, I don't know necessarily
what reasons they were thinking about at that time. But my
understanding is that because this is more of an adventure game
than an action game, perhaps people decided to go with a character
other than Mario to get that idea across a little bit easier. But
probably one of the bigger reasons for going with Luigi is that
he's just that much more likely to have interesting reactions and
be scared of ghosts when he encounters them than Mario probably
would be.
BH: Yeah, I think Luigi's got a little bit broader a range of
emotions. I think he's also a little bit more tentative. The game
is really about scaring and comedy, and he tends to have that Mr.
Bean-esque kind of hapless reluctant hero side to him, whereas his
brother is just a little too monotonous. So with a wider range, an
adventure game with a deeper story, he just kind of fits a lot
better. He can tell a better story.
BD: I also find people can relate to him a bit more. He has a fan
base as well, being a younger brother of an older brother you
probably played as Luigi growing up as well. There's also
interesting gameplay ideas that we can explore that we probably
couldn't explore with Mario, as well.

He does have a huge fan base, doesn't he? He has a group
of loyal people who always want to play Luigi, and want to see him
have that moment in the spotlight. BH: Yeah, he's got that underdog quality where you want
that little guy to be the hero. Even when you look at the game or
pick it up, you're already in that mindset, whereas Mario is more
like, let's defeat the Goombas, let's race to the end of the
course.

Right, for Mario it's battling the stages and battling
the monsters, for Luigi it's battling himself. He's got to get over
his own fear and if he can do that, that's victory for him. BH: Yep.

I played the first four stages of the game, enough to
notice that it's broken up into stages. Why did that particular
design decision end up getting made rather than having one big
mansion that you can continually explore?
BD: Being a portable game, you're going to close the lid, you're
going to always come back. So when we designed that mission
structure, it was to give the player 10 to 20 minutes and have
something satisfying happen. Another reason is it allows us to
reset the level. We can re-use the same mansion but also have a
different experience as well.
BH: It's part business, part creative decision. The business side,
as Brian mentioned, is this device is when you want to take a
break. It's not a home console and it's not a phone, it's "I want
to take a gaming break." And that 15-20 minute was conveyed from
Nintendo pretty early on: "Hey, we want somebody to have something
good happen at that moment." And then on the creative side, with a
totally open-world game you're going to end up doing a lot of
backtracking. The first one had some pretty notorious empty,
slow-paced moments. And we really wanted to hide that from the
user. So going for the mission structure, we were able to wipe your
brain clean of what you just did, set up a bunch of new unexpected
moments, and you're not baffled for why they're there. You kind of
believe that, oh, the ghosts were doing that while I was back in
the safe room. So it lets us set up more gags in the exact same
areas that you've already been through. And there was a key word
that came out from Ikebata-san early on the project
called karakuri, and it's a Japanese word around those little
boxes that open up with different kinds of locks. Or even those
little dolls. It kind of translates to "surprise and delight." And
that's what these little missions were supposed to be. The mansions
are more alive than they were in the first one. They're little
20-minute experiences where if you try to search out and explore,
it's gonna keep rewarding you with more surprises -- scary or
comedic.
BD: Another thing, it allowed our level designers to kind of prep
the user also for the next level, to kind of tease the things that
might come later on. So because they had the mission structure like
that, they could work in this box. And just keep iterating and add
new secrets for people who go and look for them.
BH: The dark-light device is a device that brings things into
existence that aren't there. Things that look suspicious. So as
Brian was mentioning, we do the find-the-difference game between
missions. So, hey, what's this landmark that's missing? That's
intriguing, I could go look there. So we use it as a distraction
and sometimes progression.
YI: Yes, as these two have mentioned, when you're talking about a
game for a portable system, you really do need a game design that
allows for shorter playing experiences. So I felt that a mission
structure really lent itself well to this kind of experience. And
as I also touched on, I do think that you have the opportunity to
add a lot of replay value to areas that the player's already
cleared once in some form or another by using a mission with a
slightly different objective, for example.

Chris Kohler/Wired.com

3D lets you play the game better

How did you end up using 3D in the game? Did you do
anything special with 3D effects? BH: Basically, the goal from the beginning was to
work with [Hideki Konno], who was the original
director of Luigi's Mansion 1. He had this idea
on the GameCube about being able to use the 3D to play the game
better. The controls are easier if you're viewing the game in 3D.
From the feedback we've had from E3s and just personally playing
it, I keep the slider on when I'm playing because it's easier to
pull back against the ghosts in our main mechanic kind of fishing
game.

Really. BH: Yes, because you can actually tell the depth of
where they are, which degree they are around Luigi. You can
basically guess the angle more correctly. So that was the main
goal, to make it that people would keep the 3D on. So, not a lot of
quick camera cuts, we use a lot of static cameras, like a
dollhouse. And the other one was that the controls would be
improved if you use 3D correctly, so you'd be able to master the
game easier.

Had you found that quick camera cuts would cause people
to turn 3D off? BH: Yeah, definitely quick camera cuts, or windows
violations where you're switching perspectives from first-person to
third-person or something, you tend to get this tiredness of the
eyes. Especially if you use a little bit too much negative
parallax, which is [when an object appears to be] off the screen,
positive parallax being into the screen. Through experimentation,
we were able to say, hey, this feels good, or doesn't feel good,
constantly be getting feedback from Nintendo as they felt the 3D
themselves.

It does feel like you did more into-the-screen. BH: Yes, it's a window into his world.
BD: Our first boss was designed to show off the depth of the
rooms. That was the goal for that boss.

I'm curious as to Ikebata-san's take also on 3D, and
what to do and not do in cases like this. Because this has really
got to be a constant learning process for Nintendo as more and more
games are developed by different groups. YI: I think that every player encounters a 3D display in
a game a little bit differently. The challenge really is to come up
with a design that is going to allow every different kind of player
to be able to play comfortably and have fun. I'm sorry if that
seems like so simple an answer, but I assure you that in practice
it's quite difficult.

The use of the small, level-based structure also let you
do multiple mansions, right? That must have given you more creative
freedom; I'm assuming you go a little crazy later on? BH: Yep. The multiple-mansion structure comes from
Miyamoto wanting a lot of value in the product. That's why a
multiplayer mode was thought about in the beginning as well that
stands equal to the single-player mode. And the multiple mansions
allow us to take Luigi into other traditionally scary environments.
Not all haunted things are the classic European mansion. So we're
going to take him down to ice mines, you're going to be in an old
steam clock factory, you're going to be in a really wet, antiquated
grown-over tower graveyard building and then finally you'll end up
in a haunted museum setting. So those give us more creative freedom
to put him in places where we can set up cooler jokes and cooler
scares.
BD: It also allowed us to do more interesting bosses as well. I'm
not sure how much spoilers we should get into, but each boss is
very specific to Luigi's Mansion. You've probably never
seen a boss [like these], except for the first one, in any other
game. It allowed us to be very creative, explore a lot of new
territory.
BH: Even Miyamoto threw out the bosses at one point and said, you
know, they're not unique to this mansion, or this franchise,
enough.
BD: The idea was like, if you see this boss, you know it's
from Luigi's Mansion. That's what he wanted.

It seems like he got himself pretty involved in this,
Mr. Miyamoto. BH: Yes, he was involved weekly, and then we have
him in Vancouver for summits.

Did you get the sense he was putting a little more
involvement into this because it's Luigi, because it's this
fundamental important character to him?
BH: I think he's stated in his interviews that he really wanted to
take over and get involved in Luigi's Mansion. And also I
think that he's using this game as a platform to mentor other
designers in Nintendo, including us. So by getting more face time
with him you learn different things. It's twofold. He really wanted
this franchise to come back strong, as well as get out there with
the dev teams.
BD: We would create gameplay proof of concepts and we would get
direct feedback from Ikebata-san and Miyamoto-san. So we were
constantly learning from them.

So to wrap it all up, this is the first project from
Next Level where you moved away from sports. It must have been a
challenge, but are you happy now to have gone away from that and do
something different?
BH: Of course, we were honoured to work on this title and be given
the time - it took about three years to make this from the original
inception. And we did learn a lot and basically working with
Miyamoto's group brings in a bunch of other different learnings as
well. So I felt it was a great opportunity for our team up in
Vancouver to basically kind of progress in the industry. Not to
negate sports games in all their greatness but this was an
opportunity that we'd never done before. And it's always nice to
get something new in our hands and try to finish that challenge.
How do we do this? We had great partners in Nintendo that really
steered the ship in the right directions or pointed out what things
we were doing wrong.

"Flipped the table over," I think is the metaphor. BH: Yeah, flipped it over for sure.